1.
An Introduction to
Processing
Cate Huston

2.
What We’ll Cover
• Making your first Applet
• The Processing API (where you can find all
kinds of useful methods)
• Animating an Applet in Processing
• Exporting your Applet

3.
What’s Processing?
• “an electronic sketchbook for developing
ideas”
• Open source environment
• Programming language (very similar to Java)
• Can be used as a library in Eclipse
• Makes it easy to create Applets

4.
So What Can We Make?
• Personally, I like to use it to make Fractals
and little games:
• http://catehuston.com/processing.html
• But you can use Processing for all kinds of
things, see:
• http://processing.org/exhibition/

5.
Getting Started
• Either
• Get the version for your operating system
from http://processing.org/download/
• Or get core.jar (this will be in the wave)
• Make a new Project in Eclipse
• Make a “lib” folder inside it, and put
core.jar there

6.
It should look like this. Notice that it’s inside
the workspace, but not inside another folder.

7.
Right click on core.jar, and select
Build Path -> Add to Build Path

8.
Make a new class, but click on the “browse” button
next to the “Superclass” text box, and find “PApplet” -
see how it’s in core.jar? And click OK.

9.
See how the Superclass is different? This just means
we’re building on top of “PApplet” - so we’re reusing
stuff that other people have made, and customizing it.

10.
This is different from last time: see how we’re
importing PApplet, and our class extends PApplet.

11.
When we make a Processing Applet
we need these two methods.

12.
If you’re pro you can use the @Override notation. This means that
we are “overriding” (replacing) a method in the Superclass (PApplet).
Don’t worry if this doesn’t make sense, it’s not that important.

13.
You’ll want your setup() method to look a bit
like this. Try running it and see what happens.

14.
Size and Background
• Play with the values we pass to size(), what
happens if we make it size(500, 500) for
example?
• Play with the values we pass to background.
What if we make it background(238)?
• We can also call background with three values,
which correspond to it’s RGB components. Try
background(256, 0, 128).

15.
Try adding some code to the
draw() method. What does this do?

16.
The Draw() Method
• Try changing the colors and the numbers in
the call to ellipse(). What does that do?
• See what else you can find at http://
processing.org/reference/
• Ellipse takes 4 arguments, what are they?
• Try making some other shapes.

17.
Making Cool Stuff
• Have multiple shapes!
• Can you use the constructs from the last
session to make something more complex?
• How about using a loop?
• Change fill() and stroke() to add more
color.

18.
Lets try something more complicated: the values at the top (x, y, size and
max) are global variables - this means we can use them in our setup()
method as well as our draw() method. We’ll use draw() to animate our
applet, taking away noLoop() means it gets called frequently.

19.
This is our draw method. Each time it runs. it will update
x and y - so the position of the object we draw will be
different. And the color will be a little different too. Try it!

20.
Using Animation
• Try playing with the code and see what you
can change.
• Can you use a different shape?
• What if you change the size of the shape
(by changing size)?
• What else would you like to know how to
do?

21.
Exporting Your Applet
• Download the P5Exporter plugin from
http://www.rednoise.org/ep5/ and drag it
into your dropins folder inside the Eclipse
folder in your file system.
• Restart Eclipse.
• You should see a new button at the top,
click it and follow the instructions
(screenshots follow).

22.
See the button on the top left? That will start the P5
exporter. The select your applet on the right of the pop
up box. You want to output an applet, not an application.

23.
Running Your Exported
Applet
• You’ll find the Applet inside your project
folder, which is inside your workspace
folder.
• It should be a folder called “applet”.
• Click on index.html and it will open up
browser window - your applet should be
there.

24.
Finally...
• Processing has huge potential, we’ve not
even scratched the surface here.
• Look at the exhibition (at processing.org)
and get inspired!
• Think about what other things you’d like to
be able to make.

25.
@kittenthebad
http://www.catehuston.com/
catehuston@googlewave.com